Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)

Whole Market is getting killed right now - stay away for a bit. However this is great to own long term. Would buy as much as possible once it drops even lower.

Nice ETF taht includes the total US market. Like another user below, I wish we could pick the option of 'matching' the SP500 since this ETF will basically do just that. No frills way of entering into the stock market, though.

sidenote: an ETF that held the entire US and Foriegn markets in a single fund would be sweet..come on, Vanguard!

With a $7.5 billion market capitalization and an exposure to the performance of 3,735 securities, closely emulating the MSCI US Broad Market Index, this ETF employs a passively managed approach. The ETF is constituted with a broad mix of value and growth stocks across the large, medium and small market capitalizations.

Financial services sectors occupies a major 22.5% share on the ETF followed by 15.3% of the IT sector while Healthcare, Consumer discretionary and Industrials hold 11%-12% each among others. Being a broad based ETF, the top ten companies make up for merely 15.28% share with Exxon Mobil holding 2.57% share, GE sharing 2.35% and Citigroup, Bank of America & Microsoft each holding 1.5%-1.75% each, among others.

Given the broad base of the ETF, it more or less emulates the movement of the US economy as a whole. As it owns more small caps in numbers, it may look a bit sluggish in the future if small stocks surrender the market leadership that they've enjoyed in recent past. This could turn out to be a major risk as small caps are not as strong to stand any headwinds in the economic scenario.

Despite an average 42% return in the past three years, the ETF managed to generate only 12.4% return over the past one year, which shows the signs of slowing economic growth. Though its expense ratio stands at an ultra-low of 0.07%, which makes it not only one of the lowest-cost ETFs in the large-blend category, but also one of the lowest-cost ETFs in existence, the economic downturn makes the fund a bit less investor friendly. Thus VTI turns out to be a less attractive investment proposition in the near term.